There is also no precedent for having an indiginous rival supplying launch services that much cheaper than Pegasus. In the past there wasn't the competition to drive the price down and the US military could be relied upon to foot the bill what ever it was but now there is an alternative with Falcon 1 and SpaceX are in a position to take virtually all their customers if they dont drop their prices. Faced with that I cant see how they can maintain their crrent price structure.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I doubt Pegasus can compete with Falcon 1. It will simply be withdrawn from the market if Falcon 1 is successful. And I think the price of a Falcon 1 launch will go up, not down. In a way it has already gone up. Falcon 1e is $8.5 million; but of course that carries a bigger payload. (Oh, it just occurred to me that I had been assuming the 723 kg payload was the $7 million Falcon 1 launch. It isnâ€™t. It is the $8.5 million Falcon 1e. The Falcon 1 payload is only about 475 kg). And I will go out on a limb here and predict that SpaceX will not be able to lower prices due to reusability. They will find the cost of recovering and refurbishing the first stage for reuse is as high as building a new one.

The German space magazine "Raumfahrt Concret" has an article about the German Aerospace Center (DLR) plans for the Moon exploration.

They show a quite complex sample return mission with a mass of about 4 tonnes (included is an additional satellite). Their rover is capable of surviving 6 to 12 Lunar days and driving of some 50 kilometers.

It needs about 465 Watts power and weighs about 300 kilograms (30 kg scientific equipment).

So I wonder if when we delete the sample return part of the mission so that we get perhaps about 2.5 t of mass if that is not better than the current idea to make it as light as possible.

Such a "heavy" rover would deliver real scientific value back and a launch onboard a Russian rocket would be still "cheap" (I think I listed somewhere in the Google Lunar X Prize Section the launch cost of a Dnepr or Kosmos rocket with 4 or 5 tonnes into LEO for some $12 millions).

_________________"The hardest hurdle to space isn't the technicalities and money. But rather, the courage and the will to do it." - Burt Rutan.

the cricial question will be if it would be sufficient to justify launch costs - including their funding - that in addition to the investment into the rover outweigh or exceed the prize money of $ 20 mio to $ 30 mio.

The Surveyors would have required a Falcon 9 - a Falcon 5 isn't under construction yet - which has launch costs of $ 35 mio which minus 10% would still be $ 31.5 mio. To keep the launch costs at $ 6.2 mio to $ 7.65 mio (Falcon 1 with Merlin1 or Merlin 1e minus 10%) the weight of the lander plus instruments plus TLI-injection stage must be kept at less than the weight of a Surveyor and less than 723 kg or 570 kg.

If it all is sufficient to get funding there will have to be an agreement about to whom the prize money should go. In the case of WK/SSO the money has gone to the Mojave Aerospace Venture.

Keep in mind when discussing the Russian Dnepr, that the Russians have a new "economic philosophy". This is reflected in >2X increases in price for future manned Soyuz flights and (according to Bigelow) has also been applied to the Dnepr with costs raised 2x to 3X.

The Dnepr was a very attractive use of a surplus = obsolete missile, turning scrap into useful cash with a modest investment of labor. It offered very interesting performance - with a few disadvantages (such as the launch site, orbital inclination and US ITAR rules) to balance against its modest cost. The Russians will eventually learn that when you get greedy enough, such markets are pinched off and you get to keep your old scrap metal instead of turning it into gold!

This is all good for SpaceX, since these were the only rockets which equaled Musk's projected launch costs. Now all these customers can use the half or full bay Falcon IV and avoid the Russian drawbacks.

As someone potentially participating, rpspeck, do you think a piggyback payload on an Ariane 5 (or an US launcher if they offer it) would be a realistic possibility or is SpaceX the only feasible solution?

_________________"The hardest hurdle to space isn't the technicalities and money. But rather, the courage and the will to do it." - Burt Rutan.

Perhaps there is an opportunity for someone like Armadillo to sell landers to more than one team so that anyone competing would just have to think about the rover.

Also if SpaceX developed a small kick stage to get teams into lunar orbit from a Falcon 1 launch it would create a new market for their rockets for anyone wanting to land something on the moon's surface.

With the "how to get there at a reasonable cost" part sorted out I bet there would be a lot of interest from governments and private companies wishing to do research on the moon.

I think that if people dont have to sort out the whole transport infrastructure and only have to concentrate on their own lander more would be willing to send rovers to the moon, not just to win this contest but also to do research.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

With some people already working on landers, and some people already working on rovers, there are clearly opportunities for collaboration. Everyone sticking to what they know, no-one spreading themselves too thinly, and it starts to look achievable.

sounds like a very good idea. The only question may be if the experiment is still going on and to what degree the idea would be an obstacle for the experiment - wouldn't the vehicle using the reflector block out each laser beam directed to that reflector?

The only question may be if the experiment is still going on and to what degree the idea would be an obstacle for the experiment - wouldn't the vehicle using the reflector block out each laser beam directed to that reflector?

I think that the reflector is no longer being used but obviously it is still on the lunar surface and I think it was a passive device and as such should still be functional.

The laser might be fired from the vehicle itself as part of a range finding device.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.